I can’t believe it. Yesterday evening I attended the party to celebrate the end of Time Team and its twenty years of broadcasting history. And I make no apologies – it has been a wonderful success. As an archaeologist, if I’d mentioned in the local pub 21 years ago that I excavated prehistoric remains in England, people would have looked at me oddly: surely you should be doing that in Greece or Egypt? We don’t have such things here in England.

Then along came twenty years of Time Team.

Today, if I walk into a pub, and announce what I do for a living, the people at the bar ask me if I do geophys, or excavate. It never occurs to them to suggest I ought to be in Greece or Egypt. And that change in popular perception is entirely down to Time Team. So isn’t it truly pathetic that the channel that supported us for 20 years decided to push today’s Time Team back by an hour? Today’s programme wasn’t one of mine, so I’m not personally upset, but thanks to the brain-dead, imagination-deprived luvvies who now control so much of the media: I missed it. And so, I suspect, did hundreds of thousands of other loyal fans. WHAT A SHODDY WAY TO TREAT SUCH AN EPOCH-MAKING SERIES! I don’t know who you are in Channel 4‘s Presentation Department, but you should be ashamed of yourselves. Am I wrong, but do I detect a feeling that intelligent programmes shouldn’t be treated in this cavalier fashion, that art exists for its own sake and has a right to be treated seriously – as something worthwile and to be proud of? I don’t know how to create a Twitter or FaceBook storm (as I’m an old fart), but surely somebody needs to draw this to public attention. So tweet it, or shout it. But please do something!

Many thank x

P.S. I have just noticed that the programme is currently scheduled to be repeated tonight (28th January) at 1900 on 4seven, and again on 1st February at 0240 on Channel 4.